The LG Expo's 1GHz Snapdragon CPU may be fast, but the handset's stubborn touch screen and clunky built-in apps dull the effect.

LG launched its new Expo horizontal slider smartphone late in 2009 with two standout features: an optional projector that displays images up to 40 inches in size, and a super-fast 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The projector attachment is still MIA, but the handset itself is here. And without the projector and LG's innovative S-Class UI, the admittedly speedy Expo just feels like yet another dull business handheld.

Design and Call Quality
The Expo measures 4.5 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches and weighs 4.5 ounces. It's made of matte grey and glossy black plastic, with a thick chrome accent band around the edges. Send, Back, and End keys sit on the bottom edge, along with a relatively pointless fingerprint reader. The 3.2-inch plastic resistive touch screen sports 800-by-480-pixel resolution, but it's stubborn and difficult to use. The roomy, slide-out QWERTY keyboard is much better, with large membrane keys.

The Expo is a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and tri-band HSDPA 7.2 (850/1900/2100 MHz) device with Wi-Fi. Voice quality was good overall, with clear transmissions to and from other callers. The earpiece sounded tinny on my end, though, and I heard a few breakups on my side during one call. Calls sounded fine through a Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset, and the speakerphone was loud enough to use outside. The Expo's big 1500 mAh battery made for a stellar 7 hours and 30 minutes of talk time in 3G modean excellent result for a 3G device.

User Interface, Apps, and Multimedia
So what does Snapdragon bring to the table? The Expo is only the second handset in the U.S. to include the 1 GHz Qualcomm CPU, after the Google Nexus One, and the first to run Windows Mobile (T-Mobile's HTC HD2 isn't here yet). The Expo has 147MB of free internal storage and 202MB RAM, with 69MB free for user programs.

The speedy processor improves some things, but mainly the UI and stubborn screen get in the way. For example, the home screen is stock Windows Mobile 6.5. It's still too easy to click the wrong icon (or miss a click entirely). It's also buggy: I clicked the Clock entryone of the home screen menu's few choicesonly to see graphical garbage appear at the top of the screen. LG's proprietary menu features four cramped, sliding bars of custom icons that are almost impossible to tell apart. On the plus side, an LG Multitasking app lets you manage or quit tasks stuck in memory, which is a lot more useful than it should be.

As a proper Windows Mobile phone, the LG Expo is a competent mobile office. It can edit Word and Excel files and display PowerPoint presentations. It hooks into Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server accounts with Direct Push e-mail, and supports over-the-air contact and calendar sync. You can send and receive instant messages from Windows Live, AIM, and Yahoo Messenger accounts (but not Google Talk). AT&T Navigator is on board for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn directions at $9.99 per month. The Expo also includes remote provisioning software, plus a biometric security app that recognizes fingerprintsthe only use we could find for that fingerprint sensor.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The optional $179 TI-based projector attachment still isn't available. It could have provided a real boost to the Expo's prospects, but we're not about to recommend you buy something based on an accessory we can't find. The proprietary headphone jack and stock Windows Media Player app make listening to music and watching videos a pain. Music sounded fine over Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headphones, but while some MP3 and WMA files played properly, other MP3s "played" with no sound. Standalone video files played smoothly thanks to the Snapdragon processor. The phone read and wrote to my 16GB SanDisk microSD card without a problem.

The 5-megapixel camera includes an LED flash and auto-focus capability. Test photos looked smooth and detailed, with flat color and contrast but a relatively natural appearance. Shutter speeds were under a second, with impressively fast auto-focus and photo saves. Recorded 640-by-480-pixel videos were dark but pretty smooth at 18.7 frames per second.

In the end, the Expo is yet another drab business handheld for corporate types tethered to Microsoft's ecosystem. The LG Expo has plenty of competition on AT&T. The AT&T Tilt2 has its own flaws, but HTC's TouchFLO 3D UI layer looks great, and it comes with the excellent Opera Mobile Web browser. Two better options: the BlackBerry Bold 9700, which offers a lightweight slab design, a better third-party app store, and RIM's trademark push e-mail with support for up to 11 accounts, albeit without the Expo's screen resolution and tight Exchange integration. The Apple iPhone 3GS, our current Editors' Choice for AT&T smartphones, has a vastly more usable touch interface, over 100,000 available apps, and a much cleaner music and video experience, though it lacks the Expo's roomy hardware keyboard and robust Exchange support.

About the Author

Jamie Lendino is the Editor-in-Chief of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Pri... See Full Bio

LG Expo GW820 (AT&T)

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